Playing with a geometric puzzle or stress ball at your desk can seem like idle diversion. It may also spark clearer or more creative thinking.

Certain kinds of hand movements have an impact on cognitive functioning, improving focus or sparking fresh thinking or faster learning, according to several recent studies. Researchers at New York University’s Polytechnic School of Engineering are exploring how fiddling with desk gadgets might yield some of those benefits on the job.

The research holds clues to how people who feel restless or confined by computer work might find the physical stimulation and stress release they need in behavior that they would have been scolded for in elementary school—fidgeting.

Researchers at NYU are studying how 40 workers use various gadgets, from infant chew toys to Slinkys, gobs of adhesive putty and ballpoint pens, to help focus, ease anxiety and jump-start creative thinking, says Michael Karlesky, a doctoral student at NYU’s engineering school. He is conducting the study with his adviser, Katherine Isbister, research director of NYU’s Game Innovation Lab and author of two books on computer game design and research.

]]>http://game.engineering.nyu.edu/figet-widgets-in-the-wall-street-journal/feed/0Games Move Us – An Exploration of Design Innovations that Lead to Player Emotions.http://game.engineering.nyu.edu/games-move-us-an-exploration-of-design-innovations-that-lead-to-player-emotions-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=games-move-us-an-exploration-of-design-innovations-that-lead-to-player-emotions-2
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From the Interactive Media & Games Seminar Series; Katherine Isbister examines the new techniques that game designers and developers have added to the pantheon of media strategies for influencing how we feel while playing games.

Game designers spend years developing games to get players to this place. It’s what makes the difference between a hit game that fans play for hours on end and something they’re done with after 20 minutes. Melcer and his colleagues may have a new way to understand players’ needs–even better than the players understand themselves.

“There are a lot of things that go into a gaming experience that can be difficult to communicate, and some people don’t have the verbal skills to be able to do so,” Melcer says. “Sometimes communicating with visual objects makes that a lot easier.”

]]>http://game.engineering.nyu.edu/phd-candidate-eddie-melcer-featured-in-popsci/feed/0Arcadiahttp://game.engineering.nyu.edu/arcadia/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=arcadia
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One of our developers in residence, Ramsey Nasser is part of a project to integrateClojure and Unity 3D. Clojure brings the live editing, dynamic typing, and persistent data structures of a modern Lisp to the world of video games. Unity brings the cutting edge graphics, real time physics, and multi-platform export offered by an industry standard engine to the world of functional programming. Arcadia’s goal is to make these two powerful tools interoperate seamlessly to provide a powerful and fluid game development experience.

Check out Ramsey and Tims Gardner make a flappy bird clone in Arcadia in this video:

The Computer Science and Engineering Department's newest course, Game Design for Citizen Science, aims to take an interdisciplinary approach, exploring the intersection between games, technology, education, psychology, and culture, and to bridge the gap that exists between the arts and the sciences.

The concept of “Citizen Science” describes an emerging set of tools and techniques that utilize crowdsourcing, distributed problem solving, and other socially ­focused research methods. Citizen Science allows non­-experts to contribute in significant ways to large­ scale scientific projects. They collect data about the natural world in The Great Sunflower Project; solve puzzles to model proteins with FoldIt; and map the neural connections in our brains with EyeWire.

In this class massively multiplayer online games will be designed under the constraints of scientific discovery, general education, and teaching problem solvingskills. The course is a combination of the technology, design, and philosophy underlying citizen science games, as well as the real-world implementation challenges faced by developers.

This class represents a collaboration between all of the different departments that comprise MAGNET­ (NYU’s Media and Games Network): Computer Science and Integrated Digital Media (NYU School of Engineering), the NYU Game Center (Tisch School of the Arts), Education Technology (Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development), and the Media Research Lab (Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences).

]]>http://game.engineering.nyu.edu/game-design-for-citizen-science/feed/0TEI 2015 Costumes as Game Controllers Workshophttp://game.engineering.nyu.edu/tei-2015-costumes-as-game-controllers-workshop/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tei-2015-costumes-as-game-controllers-workshop
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Going to be at TEI'15 this year? Check out Katherine Isbister and Kaho Abe at the Costumes as Game Controllers Workshop. The workshop will provide participants with a hardware kit for quickly protoyping wearable game controllers. Topics include:

Embodied interaction and embodied game interfaces, characters and avatars.

Basics of method acting and “outside->in” theatrical techniques.

Cultural perspectives on clothing, fashion, and wearability.

The importance of shaping experience, identity, and sociality in addition to individual-focusedfunction when designing wearable interfaces.

Fashion aficionados similarly use the clothing they select to inhabit an identity and to project that identity in social contexts and interactions with others. What takes place in a bounded ‘magic circle’ of gameplay with costuming, we believe also has relevance outside this sphere and in the realm of everyday life. We can see the beginnings of the modulation of wearables into fashion with experiments like Google’s collaboration with Diane von Furstenberg putting Glass on runway models. This studio will allow participants to reflect upon the transformation of wearables into fashion objects in their own right, toward anticipating and designing these aspects of such devices.

The “Costumes and Wearables as Game Controllers” studio aims to explore how researchers within the tangible and embodied interaction community can expand the expressive possibilities inherent in wearables and embodied interfaces by applying inspiration from costuming and fashion design

Kaho Abe and Katherine Isbister are also demoing their game-in-progressfeaturing interactive costumes. We believe the game will be an interesting experience for TEI attendees, and could spark discussion about the relationship between costuming, wearable technology, and games.

For more information about the workshop and it's esteemed organizers, click here.

2014 is a year in which games and their mechanics were not so much invented or revolutionized, but rather expertly refined. We have seen a consolidation of mechanics, with many interesting re-combinations and hybrids. And, in a welcome change of pace, they do not generally degenerate to gimmicks and one-trick ponies that lack replay value. What has taken place is experimentation with the known, given a better understanding of the current designer tool set. What I believe we could use much more of is insightful writing and speaking about game design details, along the lines of my current favorite, MtG lead designer Mark Rosewater’s Drive to Work podcast. I have plans for this in the form of an NYU Press hosted and published, online only, open access Game Design Journal, for which details will be available soon (early 2015, if all goes well).

But not all great games this year are strictly competitive, and many of them challenge more than two players — I don’t only play card games. The dominant themes in my list besides the aforementioned 1v1 card and dice games are refined Euro games, a few very accessible fantasy war games, one free-for-all battle arena game, and cooperative games; one of those cooperative games has the potential of a betrayer, a mechanic popularized by Shadows over Camelot (2005) and Battlestar Galactica (2008). And there are werewolves and orcs — both fantasy and science fiction — and zombies and sheep. You know, the usual suspects.

Today, educators are using mindfulness meditation techniques in schools to get kids to slow down, focus on their own breathing, and be present in the moment. This technique was popularized by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a Buddhist and a professor of medicine emeritus who’s work found that such practices can help reduce stress.

The core idea for Ly’s app is based on a Chinese parable about empathy and mindfulness. In the parable, an ox herder becomes frustrated because his oxen aren’t cooperating with his directions. But as he calms down, so do the ox. Eventually he sees that he’s an ox, too.

In the app, which is still in development, young users will progress through scenes by breathing into the iPad’s microphone and following certain breath patterns. In the first scene, following the breath pattern might just make the ox come out of hiding. But as the scenes progress and music changes, the character comes closer and becomes friends with the user as long as he or she keeps breathing calmly. But if you breathe too hard or yell? The ox will run away.

The Fast Company wrote a nice piece on the future of games. Check it out!

"A perfect storm of distribution channels, game literacy, and appetite for content has led to an explosion of aesthetic games that deal with quieter emotions," says Katherine Isbister, a professor in NYU's gaming program. "There's now a robust, diverse market for games that may not be blockbusters, but can be profitable because they have much lower production costs."

]]>http://game.engineering.nyu.edu/video-games-for-grown-ups/feed/0Alt Control Jam 2014 Winners!http://game.engineering.nyu.edu/alt-control-jam-2014-winners/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=alt-control-jam-2014-winners
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This year's Alternative Control Game Jam at the Game Innovation Lab had a great turnout of programers , designers and students. These teams worked tirelessly for 48 hours (with breaks for Mario Kart) to create one of a kind controllers and games.

The Winners!

Space Box:

Built using a Makey Makey, players take a seat in an alien spaceship made from a cardboard-box and try to conrol their flight using molded clay buttons. One problem, the buttons are random everytime you play! Some make you turn, some fire the engines, and some honk your space horn.

Occulus Snowboarding

A virtual reality Snow boarding simulator. This team repurposed a Tony Hawk Skate-board controller and made their own sensor pads to make this wild ride of a game!

Body Music

A kinect based dynamic music game. Move Fast!

High Five Game.

Hi five your friends before they leave for the day! Run back and forth and High Five these pads before you run out of time. This setup used wireless Arduino Microcontrollers and handmade touch sensors, place them even further apart for higher difficulty!

Game Theory with Leap motion.

A 2-4 player game using the leap motion as a controller. Use you hands and fingers to move and shoot, beating the enemy team with your friend and rivial, the single person with the most points wins!